Life and Death on the Loxahatchee: The Story of Trapper Nelson

By James D. Snyder

The son of a Polish immigrant, Vince Nataulkiewicz would drop out of school, ride the rails out West and change his name Nelson when finally settling along Florida's most breathtaking jungle river. In the next four decades he'd become a man of many faces: trapper, hunter, alligator wrestler, zookeeper, celebrity host, snake charmer, woman charmer, voracious reader. Along the way, this real-life Tarzan would acquire over 1,100 acres that would one day form the heart of Florida's first Wild and Scenic River.

On a steamy July in 1968, Vince"Trapper" Nelson was found ned of a shotgun blast in his jungle paradise. Many had a motive. So did Trapper himself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jan 4, 2023
• ISBN: 9781737097648

James D. Snyder

Jim Snyder lives along the Loxahatchee River in Tequesta, Florida and is active in organizations to conserve Florida's first Wild and Scenic River. He is also a former board chairman of the Loxahatchee River Historical Society. A graduate of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, Snyder spent over forty years as a Washington correspondent and magazine publisher before resettling in South Florida and continuing his love of writing as an author.

Book preview

Life & Death on the

Loxahatchee

Life and Death on the Loxahatchee : The Story of Trapper Nelson

by James D. Snyder.

© 2002, 2004, 2007, 2022 by James D. Snyder.

Published by Pharos Books, Tequesta, FL.

Cover Illustration: Painting ©Ron Parvu; Tequesta, Florida.

Fourth Edition. Printed in the United States of America

19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12                         4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

LCCN 2002190070

ISBN, print edition 978-1-7370976-3-1

ISBN, eBook edition 978-1-7370976-4-8

Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication

(Provided by Quality Books, Inc.)

Snyder, James D.

Life and death on the Loxahatchee : the story of Trapper Nelson / James D. Snyder. -- 4th ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-1-7370976-3-1

1. Nelson, Trapper. 2. Zoo keepers--Florida-- Biography. 3. Trapper Nelson’s Zoo and Jungle Garden. 4. Jupiter (Fla.)--Biography. I. Title.

QL31.N45S69 2002               590’.7’3092

                                             QBI02-701380

Life & Death on the

Loxahatchee

The Story of Trapper Nelson

James D. Snyder

To Kyle, Melinda, Jessica, Rachel and Codey. I hope this will help you keep the Loxahatchee and its story alive for your grandchildren as well.

Acknowledgments

Lots of lives and memories went into this book. Today, when million-dollar fishing boats with 300 h.p. outboard engines zoom up the Loxahatchee, it’s especially valuable to preserve snapshots of a time when owning a two-cycle putt-putt made you among the well-heeled of Jupiter.

Back in 2000, when I first began researching Vince Nelson’s life story, those who had shared his world were getting on in years, but still sharp of mind and tongue when I interviewed them. All but a few are now gone as I update the original book that appeared in 2002. But I’m not about to identify each person mentioned therein as deceased, still alive, or other speed bumps in the reader’s path. They’re all very much alive in this story.

Others contributed in special ways. My late wife Sue was the first to read a draft chapter and blow the whistle on shoddy workmanship. Bob Schuh, a long-time Jonathan Dickinson State Park ranger, and Richard E. Roberts, now retired after some forty years as the park’s chief biologist, shared their files and photos of Trapper memorabilia. Josh Liller, archivist/historian of the Loxahatchee River Historical Society, doggedly researched new information that was incorporated in this edition. Ron Parvu, our local incarnation of Andrew Wyeth, graciously supplied the haunting cover painting of Trapper’s venerable boathouse.

Most of all, I’d like to thank the few family members of Trapper Nelson I have been fortunate to know. They are Lucille Celmer (the wife of his sister’s son) and her son Philip Celmer iii and daughter Marcie. Phil, especially, has stayed in touch all these years and recently found more photos of his great uncle that hadn’t seen the light of day until now.

One common trait stood out during my interviews with the family. All loved Vince Nelson and revered his memory. Despite some initial misgivings that an outsider might try to invent a tawdry tale, they gave me the freedom and the family records necessary to present Trapper Nelson as I saw him — warts and all. I hope I’ve justified their trust.

—JDS—

Preface

Four times a day the aluminum pontoon boat Loxahatchee Queen II churns its way up the river with sightseers from the 11,000-acre Jonathan Dickinson State Park just northwest of Jupiter, Florida. Its destination on the 45-minute ride upstream is the park’s centerpiece, the restored compound once occupied for more than 35 years by Vince Trapper Nelson.

Of course, the best way to go is the way Trapper did back in 1934. Paddle a canoe from the park up Florida’s first federally designated Wild and Scenic River and you’ve soon left most of humankind behind. At first the Loxahatchee is brackish, a football field wide, with tall mangroves leaning over the sloping banks. In a mile or so the river narrows and begins a snake’s curly crawl. Saltwater intrusion from the Atlantic Ocean six miles eastward now wanes and by mile nine gives way to a freshwater ecology. Large ferns, saw palmettos, pond apple trees and stunted maples are joined by battered old cypress trees that form the retreating rear guard against the continued saltwater invasion. As the river depth declines, you see catfish and mullet wiggling over the sandy bottom in the tannin-stained water. Turtles sun on fallen logs, herons stand motionless on the shore as they stay focused on the serious business of spearfishing. Overhead, an osprey leaves his lookout atop a dead cypress branch and vectors in on a fish while turkey buzzards hover silently overhead, catching the constant breeze.

After another mile your arms may start to ache a bit. The current against you is now stronger because you’re nearer to the many marshes and network of canals that supply the upper Loxahatchee. At this point the river may be only thirty feet across and you’ll scrape bottom if you don’t stay in the meandering channel. Lilies may crowd the shore in spots, and little rivulets beckon like sirens trying to lure you into a dead-end swamp — perhaps home to one of the park’s fifty or so gators.

Then just as you round another identical bend you’re staring squarely at a hundred feet of boat dock, all hewn together from fat-lighted pine logs (so full of natural turpentine when they were cut that they still ward off worms and rot). Most of the dock is topped with a crude, corrugated metal roof.

Welcome to the remains of Trapper Nelson’s Zoo and Jungle Garden. As you stride past abandoned animal cages or stop at a tin-roofed chickee hut that now serves as a picnic area, the only sounds may be the faint hum from Interstate 95 and the Florida Turnpike, the busy byways that bring South Florida some one thousand new residents each day.

Vince Nelson picked this place to live the rest of his life until his mysterious death in 1968. In fact, mysterious, — or better, mystique — are words that followed him all his life. Perhaps it’s because he was so much like his beloved Loxahatchee. Both have many dimensions. Neither has allowed anyone to peer deep within them. And each has remained a symbol of the last stubborn resistance to the relentless incursion of asphalt, concrete and cable that advances on South Florida each day.

Above all, Trapper Nelson was a man who lived life on his own terms. This is his story — and, of course, the drastically different world of early Jupiter.

Wake up, Charlie, John! Have a look at this! The freight train was rolling to a near stop, probably to pick up a load of logs on its way south to Miami. Vince Nelson had been squinting through a slight opening in the sliding door of their boxcar, and now he rolled it wide open with a bold shove so the other two stowaways could see what he’d been gawking at.

The early morning sun streamed into the boxcar as the train barely crawled over a low bridge across a river maybe a quarter-mile wide. Below them an incoming tide had brought in a swift current the color of aquamarine. Their mouths hung open as they studied mounds of live oyster beds, then deep pools of clear water with the slender tops of large snook stacked like cordwood against the bridge’s wooden pilings. Every few seconds the surface would break with the leap of a frisky fish that they would soon come to know intimately as mullet. On the north side of the river was a handsome red lighthouse and a few outbuildings. On the south or right shore were several docks and frame houses sitting behind a shallow sand beach. Well beyond them to the east they could make out silent whitecaps surging in from the Atlantic Ocean.

In a few minutes they could feel the train start to lurch forward again. It was time for a quick decision. Who needs to go to Miami? boomed Vince. Look at all that land and water. You’ll never go hungry living in this place. As soon as the train reached the other side of the bridge, the three young adventurers from Trenton, New Jersey had swung to the ground with their bags of clothes, knives, guns and trapping gear.

At age 23, Vince had already ridden the rails so long that he didn’t think twice about walking atop a freight train swaying along at sixty miles an hour. He was already an experienced trapper, tanner and hunter. Today survivalist usually means someone who keeps a gun and tins of C-rations in his basement. In 1931 Vince was a seasoned survivalist in the acute sense that he had faced starvation with no money in his pockets. And now, as Depression gripped the nation some two years after the worst stock market crash in history, others were learning what it meant as well.

He was born Vincent Natulkiewicz in Trenton on November 6, 1908,¹ the second youngest of five children. The name and family were a mixture of Polish and Russian. His father had come to America in 1903 and had found a job in a ceramics factory. He spoke only Polish, and when Vince was a child he would accompany his father shopping to make sure local merchants didn’t get the best of him. In fact, Vince was a very bright lad who excelled in mathematics when he graduated from eighth grade.

But there the formal education stopped — perhaps because it was also about that time that the family itself began to unravel. Vince’s mother had died when he was 13. When his father remarried, Vince and his older brother Charlie couldn’t accept their new stepmother. They had already spent long summer days trapping groundhogs because the state paid a bounty on them. Then they’d trapped muskrats and otters around Lake Carnegie outside of Trenton. Soon the days away from home stretched into fall and winter.

At age 17 or 18, Vince Natulkiewicz got a job on a road gang building the Pulaski Skyway in New Jersey. It paid 50 cents an hour, and he wouldn’t have liked it had it paid ten times that much. Something else added to his misery. He had leapt from adolescence into the world of romance by falling in love with a married woman. When she ended the affair — whether torrid or tranquil isn’t known — by announcing that she was going back to her husband, the young man was crushed. That was the day he also smashed up the family car, his sister Marcie would say.

Soon afterward, Vince, his best friend John Dykas, and his brother Charlie — eight years his senior — were off to see the u.s.a., relying on the rail system with thousands of other hobos and job seekers. By the time they reached Colorado, they’d already trapped along the way, selling hides and shooting craps in boxcars for enough cash to stay alive. They rode the rails all the way to southernmost Texas. One day, after they’d wandered across the Rio Grande to the Mexican side, Vince was setting traps when he looked up to find himself surrounded by Federales. The Mexican civil war was raging and the government troops thought the husky young American was probably running guns across the river to Zapata and his rebels.

So it was several weeks in a rat-infested, adobe Mexican prison while the authorities pondered what to do with him. They had no firm evidence, but what they did know was that the prisoner was eating so much they couldn’t afford to keep him. By then young Vince was already filling out what would become 220 pounds on a barrel-chested, six-foot-two frame.

He also had deep blue eyes and movie star looks. Once released from jail, Vince hopped aboard another freight train headed for California, but Hollywood wasn’t exactly waiting at the other end. After setting traps for weeks in the unfriendly, unproductive Mohave Desert, he found himself penniless and near starvation. Years later he would tell friends in Jupiter that he might have died if he hadn’t stumbled into an orange grove. The oranges were huge, almost like melons, and they tasted awfully sour, but they saved my life, he would say. It was some time before he realized that he’d been gorging on grapefruits.

It was back to Trenton for a rendezvous with Charlie and John, but all three soon got the travel itch again once they compared the snow and ice of the New Jersey winter with what they’d sampled in sunnier climes. This time they decided to head southeast for, maybe West Palm Beach, maybe the Everglades or even the Florida Keys. The Jupiter that the trapper trio landed upon in September 1931 consisted of about 250 souls, and that was if you counted the little knot of Afro-American families that had their own close-knit community further to the west. Three years before, a landmark hurricane — the kind where everyone remembers just what they were doing the night it struck — had battered the little wooden homes, and people were just now completing the long rebuilding process.

But the essence of Jupiter and its first families were still there. Anchoring the town just off the ocean inlet was the fish camp, boat dock and restaurant